Thursday, 2 October 2014

An exceptional Black Metal logo always draws me in and the singular
art work in this oversized cardboard CD case makes this a hard disc to
ignore.

Razor-sharp tones (a high C#?) open ‘Your Putrid Eyeballs’ sliding
over each other like greased jade. These thin green needles puncture
the twilight (it’s getting dark as I type) and I notice that swinging my
head from side-to-side makes them dance gently in the middle of the
room. A brown and granular wash (think coffee grounds) plays a
twin-tone melodie as liquid hydrogen rushes down a spiral staircase
leaving toxic steam in its wake. The between-track silence is uncanny.

Beautiful austerity.

‘Fungal Air Creeping Adders’ jams on these strange radiophonic tones
further, bunching them up to create a ripple, a rhythm and a steady
bass-line crackle. It all sounds strangely contemporary and the sort of
thing I imagine is played in an inner-city night club shortly before
kicking out time; the feeling of dread and alienation is real. An
occasional metallic scratching uncovers itself gradually, steadily
becoming unnerving, unsettling…like something is about to shear off and
screech out the stereo covered in nasty blisters. And then…just before
the end a beautiful thing happens and two sine-wave tones modulate in
just the right way to create a third tone, a harmony that sings like an
angel. It only lasts a second but becomes the grit in the oyster, the
seldom seen hint of violet in a rainbow.